Old timer

I digital painting based on an 19th century photograph I came across. It was a sepia photo so I had to make up the colors which is difficult for skin tones.

Ugolino and his sons

I was in the great city New York recently and had time to sit and draw at the MET. Of course I went directly to my favorite statue: "Ugolino and his sons" by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. So for about 2 hours I sat in a conspicuous corner and tried to best my last try at this subject.

In this drawing you can get a good idea of my process, moving up from the bottom you can see I block in the most general shapes and then get more and more detailed shapes, next I begin to work in the shading and finally tighten edges.

Also, if you have any way to get to NY in the next 2 months, there is an absolutely brilliant J.C. Leyendecker show up at the Society of Illustrators with some of the most jaw-dropping work I have ever seen.

Conte drawing

A charcoal drawing out of my sketchbook. Even though I use the same type of hard charcoal as my figure drawings I have a lot more control in my sketchbook (it seems). It is Conte which is hard difficult to use because it doesn't erase easily. But I have been able to get good tight flowing lines by using the side of the stick, see the hair.

the Poet

This is my take on a poet.
Sorry for the break, took a little trip and saw the beautiful city of Prague and the Bavarian region of Germany. So now I am back and inspired, especially by the Alphonse Mucha work I saw. Mucha is in my opinion the greatest artist of all time, his posters are great but you must see his oil paintings and especially his Slav epic (be sure to visit this link though the images are mediocre) to know what I mean.

in other news, check out the updated clean edges on my previous Sweeney Todd post, thanks Shawn.